New
York, NY (October 9, 1995) If you revel next year at New
Orleans’ Mardi Gras, you can thank Blaine Kern for much
of the fun. Kern, 68, is the creator of Mardi Gras’ most
spectacular floats. For this year’s $2 million Endymion
Mardi Gras parade, Kern built a 120-foot float that
carried 120 masked riders and depicted old and new New
Orleans. Mounted on the back was a giant slot machine that
spat out thousands of doubloons featuring the Endymion
club’s logo and motto. Kern is also the man most
responsible for opening the once-snooty carnival to
ordinary folk.
But for Kern, Mardi Gras is more than a celebration. It
is a big part of his livelihood. Blaine Kern Artists, now
the world’s largest float builder of parade floats, has
been used by celebrants from Cuba to Cannes. It creates
the fantastic, oversized figures that bob and weave past
cheering throngs.
It’s a dim memory now, but for years Mardi Gras was
closed to all but the old families who controlled New
Orleans’ social structure. An outsider, Kern started to
crack open the Mardi Gras enclave 27 years ago when he
helped found the Bacchus carnival club, or krewe.
The son of an impoverished artists, Kern went to work
at 14, painting smokestacks and ships in the New Orleans
yards. When he offered to paint a mural in a hospital to
help pay his mother’s medical bills, he got his break.
One of the hospital’s doctors was captain of the Alla
carnival krewe. He so admired Kern’s mural that he asked
the young man to design and build 11 floats for the
club’s 1946 Mardi Gras parade. Kern was off and running.
His Alla floats got the attention of wealthy
businessman and socialite Darwin Fenner, the son of the
Fenner in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith.
Captain of the exclusive Rex krewe, Fenner underwrote
trips to Europe for Kern to study carnival traditions in
Cologne, Frankfurt, Nice, Viareggio and Valencia.
Back in New Orleans, Kern spotted a weakness in the
Mardi Gras parades staged by the old-line krewes. Limited
as participation was to an upper crust, they had lost much
of their vitality, and the floats were predictable and
boring. The floats that Kern built for Rex in the early
1950s were vivid: busts of dragons and storybook
characters whose heads turned and whose eyes moved.
But through the krewes bought his wares, they remained
exclusive. In 1968, Kern and a group of young businessmen
decided to bulldoze Mardi Gras’ social barriers. They
started their own krewe, Bacchus, which produced the
biggest, most extravagant floats ever. You needed no
social credentials to join.
“Some people wanted to hit me in the head for
proletarianizing the carnival,” Kern recalls. They
pressured the owners of the tractors used to pull Mardi
Gras floats not to rent to Bacchus. Kern and the other
upstarts bought their own vehicles.
Overcoming this obstacle, gave Kern another business
idea. Whey not create floats and buy tractors to rent to
others during the festivities? Kern built his floats with
detachable features so they could be adapted easily to any
number of themes. Kern’s rental business took off
immediately. This year, he’ll rent more than 700 floats.
He’s refurbishing another 140 floats that belong to
various parade organizations.
When Kern began building floats in the 1940’s, there
were just a dozen parading krewes in the New Orleans area.
Today, there are 57 and Kern builds floats for 31 of them.
He also builds floats for Mardi Gras parades in cities
like Biloxi, Miss. and Galveston, Texas. All told, his
floats will appear in 60 or so major parades this year.
Kern is also capitalizing on the explosive growth of
fantasylands. A second company, Kern Sculpture Co.,
founded in 1983 by son Barry Kern, 33, builds customized
props and figures for theme parks (EuroDisney), casinos
(Las Vegas’ Luxor and MGM Grand) and emporiums (the
Disney store).
In and around New Orleans, Kern has warehouses, or
“dens,” totaling 500,000 square feet. One, now called
Mardi Gras World, has become a tourist attraction in its
own right, where for $5.50 visitors can view the Creature
from the Black Lagoon, Alice in Wonderland, Marilyn Monroe
and Lee Iacocca. Last year more than 100,000 visitors
toured the facility and gift shop. The Kerns also rent out
Mardi Gras World for parties. Son, Brian Kern, 30, runs
the business, which will generate over $1 million in
revenue this year.
Blaine Kern’s next fantasy? To develop 40 acres of
riverfront property he controls in Algiers, across the
river from New Orleans. Conjuring up a vision of
condominiums, hotels and a giant Mardi Gras theme park,
Kern says: “This is going to be new New Orleans. Sounds
crazy, doesn’t it?”
In 1959, Kern met a fellow master of fantasy, Walt
Disney. Visiting Mardi Gras, Disney was taken with
Kern’s 18-foot tall gorilla that walked, snarled and
grimaced. Disney put the gorilla in his Wonderful World of
Color TV show and offered Kern a job. Kern considers
Disney “the greatest man of the 20th century, because he
used his art and imagination to break down barriers
between people.” But, he said no to Walt. He wanted to
remain on his own and stay at home. Today, the Walt Disney
Co. is one of this best customers.
Big business? Not really. The Kern enterprises will
probably gross $10 million this year and keep the Kern
family well fed, clothed and housed. But Blaine Kern is
having lots of fun. “If you write to Mr. Mardi Gras,”
he exults, “I get the mail. Do you believe that? Like
Santa Clause.”
